Lambrusco (5 page)

Carmella was a Saponi, from a long line of fishermen. Her father, Galto, had been the first nonwaiter to join the squad. She'd contact him, too. “Papa, if anything happens to my husband, I won't forgive you, and if anything happens to you, I won't forgive him, but if anything happens to both of you, I will personally, with my own two hands, wring the neck of your leader, and I swear that I mean it, Beppi Fantini, in case you're listening.”

She was a slight, small-boned, curly-haired blond woman who should have looked, and felt, terrible, after birthing nine children in less than a dozen years, never mind raising them on the salary of a waiter. But the opposite had happened.

There was a light in her eyes. A sureness. She was a woman who believed herself to be beautiful, regardless of what anyone else had to say about it. And she believed herself to be brave. That shine of hers rubbed off on anyone who was near her. “We're naming this new girl, the ninth one, and we swear, the last, for your Beppino.”

The children had inherited their mother's personality, and every one of them had Mauro's big, droopy dark eyes and hangdog expression, as if they'd been born middle-aged and a little saggy, looking out at the world with such a deep, quiet sadness, you'd think their lives were full of misery and deprivation that could not, by any effort, be concealed.

Mauro Pattuelli was the most popular-with-customers waiter Aldo's had ever had, even though he was clumsy, slow, and inept. To have as your waiter a man who looked as woeful as Mauro was to feel that all the worries of the world were off your shoulders, having been placed onto his, and you could really sit back and enjoy yourself.

All he had to do was walk over to unhappy customers and listen and nod his head, looking at them as if he felt their grievance so keenly, he was ready to cry; he was struggling to hold back the tears—their predicament reminded him of things in his own experience, all tragic—and the complainers would change their tune, would feel uplifted, would even make an effort to get the sad clown to smile, which was different from what happened when Beppi was involved. Beppi would stand there with his arms across his chest, as staunch as a plow, saying, “If you have anything bad to say about my restaurant, go to hell.”

The train had come to a stop. San Guarino. No one was in sight, not even a stationmaster or an assistant.

“I have the feeling,” said Annmarie, “you're reluctant to leave, but please, let's go.”

“I want to find Beppi.”

“That's what we're trying to do.”

“I want to stay on until the end of the line.”

“That's not possible. We've had a signal. Look, this is the first station we've come to without Germans. I have the feeling we've been told to get off here because the stations down the line might not be safe.”

“I don't care. Leave without me.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, come
on.
”

It should not have been surprising that a woman who was a golfer and also a soldier should have powerful arms, a powerful grip. But I had not been expecting this course of action, and I gave a little cry as I was yanked from my seat—
yanked!

The son of a bitch American! Was I supposed to be afraid of her? Was I supposed to be intimidated? Was I supposed to believe that if I didn't obey her, she'd throw me out the window like the flour?

“It looks like it's snowing in your Romagna.” That was what she'd said when she got rid of it. What a smug, self-centered, unfeeling thing to say! What did she care about wasting the dough for Aldo's party? That flour had been so hard to get! Falling flour was not like snow! It wasn't snowing!

The arrogance! Pretending to confide in me, like a normal woman, in a real conversation, like a couple of friends! To the point of telling secrets! A sham to gain trust! There wasn't any trust!

Thrusting my purse at me! Pulling me out of the compartment, dragging me out the door! Not letting go of me! Yanking me harder! Like an enemy! If she were really a nun, she would still be a son of a bitch!

“A
RE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

No answer. I believed the American didn't deserve one. I was off the train and on the platform, catching my breath, getting ready to describe out loud how I felt. Carmella Pattuelli never would have put up with this. She would have found a way to be strong.

I imagined Carmella as the heroine of an opera, strong, indomitable, small in size but huge in spirit: a secret, at-home radio operator to partisans, mother of a gang of children who did what they were told to, wife of a sad-sack, adored waiter, daughter of a tough old Adriatic fisherman. How I envied her!

A role. When was the last time I'd enjoyed studying a new part?

The train pulled slowly away. Before me was the small, trim box of a station house. The door was locked with an enormous outside bolt. The windows were covered with dust, which made the darkness and stillness inside unbearable.

“Looks like no one's been here for a while,” the American said.

“Don't speak to me. Everything you said to me on the train, believe me, I forgot. Already in my mind, I've erased every word.”

“I'm sorry I had to use a little force.”

“You
assaulted
me.”

“I apologize. I wonder what the name of this village is. It's only got one road.”

“Did you hear what I said? Don't speak to me.”

“But I have to. I've been assigned to you, and I don't know where I am.”

“That doesn't concern me.”

There was a smooth old wooden bench against the station house. I moved it away from the wall, so I could sit down—I was still very shaky—and not have to look at San Guarino. You couldn't give it one glance without filling your eyes with Etto Renzetti's factory.

It was a village with a curse on it, I remembered. An actual curse.

“I wonder if those extraordinary children are on their way to us,” said the American. “Even better, their parents, with a car that's got some gas. Or maybe we should start walking. Do you think so? Is that some sort of a factory, straight ahead?”

“Shut
up.
”

The bench was filthy but I sat on it anyway.
La Cenerentola.
Rossini's Cinderella. That was the last new part I had purely, simply loved.

All those years ago. How old was Beppi when I first sang those songs?

He'd seen a puppet show in the village, the usual thing, a castle, a king, a queen, a prince, a princess, and the minute he came home he went to work on us with demands that we produce a baby sister. He cried his eyes out when Aldo explained that Papa was too old for babies and Mama didn't want one, as I was satisfied, most of the time, with the one I had. Beppi felt that we'd plotted together to break his heart. “I need a princess! I need a princess!”

“You already have one, and it's Mama,” Aldo had said. “Come and listen to the new songs. She learned them only for you. There's a girl named Cinderella. She's in a wretched situation, which we hope will improve.”

Early-primary-school age. Beppi had been six or seven, around the age of Carmella and Mauro's second set of twins. The American, who'd been quiet, was scanning the area hopefully. She must have been waiting for those kids to appear at the station like a rescue party.

It wasn't going to happen. The Pattuelli family had been banished some years ago from San Guarino: the hill outside the village was the closest they'd go.

Mauro was the son of a carpenter, but he'd not followed in his father's footsteps. He'd been working in the factory kitchen, and met Aldo and Beppi on one of their buying visits. Having taken one look at his long, sad-clown face, which even then was heavy with feeling, they saw the potential; they talked him into coming to the restaurant.

Mauro had inherited his family's house in the middle of the one street. The Pattuelli Eight, as they were called—Beppina was only a toddler then—would only play among themselves. They did not attend school in the next village like the rest of the San Guarino children, but instead took the train to Mengo to be in classrooms with other waiters' children. This was something San Guarino objected to, having objected in the first place to their numbers, as if Mauro and Carmella were two rabbits in a hutch in their midst, breeding like crazy.

And their house and everything they owned smelled like fish. There was just simply too much fish.

One evening, after hours, the crew boss of the came-from-away laborers who lived on the factory's top floor discovered the Pattuelli Eight with the workmen in their private quarters—jumping on cots like trampolines, climbing on bureaus, being chased about by homesick Sardinians, and talking in dialects they'd picked up, probably filled with profanities.

If they had been anyone else's children, the crew boss would not have decided to have them officially charged with trespassing. And the older boys had slingshots made from materials they'd taken from the scrap heap on the side of the building, which made them thieves.

The village had never been suitable for that family anyway. Banishment was what everyone had agreed upon, instead of a very large fine, or consignment in a permanent way to a Fascist school, which had been threatened.

I knew all this because Beppi had told me about it, the whole story, including the part about the curse.

The fisherman grandfather of the children, Galto Saponi—“This is what happens to people who complain that my family is fishy”—had commissioned one for San Guarino from a fortuneteller who was another fisherman's wife, and a genuine witch, people said, who had once cursed French archaeologists for raiding a burial site near San Marino. On the way back to France, their ship sank. They were stranded on a raft for a week and would never recover their health, but their plunders were safe, at the bottom of the sea.

“Banishment or not, never go past the little hill before the train station, or you'll step on cursed land, and nothing can protect you,” Galto had instructed the children, by order of the witch. It was said that the current, carpenter-family owners of the old Pattuelli home were plagued by problems, which were never there before: mice kept appearing in cupboards, and the cats who tried to catch them died; the roof started falling apart; the walls had an unnatural dampness, which often smelled outhouse-type foul.

Oh, but the children had been lovely on that hill, somber and sweet in a huddle, especially the second twins, Alda and Lucianna.

And the baby, too. Of every child and every grandchild belonging to Aldo's waiters and cooks—and there had to be more than fifty of them—Beppina Pattuelli, with her big, sparkly eyes, was by far the most indulged, the most cherished. Beppi adored her. He didn't care if anyone accused him of playing favorites. He called her the Italian Shirley Temple, although her hair was dark like a chestnut, and as straight as a poker.

Why hadn't Beppi married?

What happened to that girl from Forli who came to Mengo with her family because they didn't want to live in Mussolini's town? They were all Communists, and they lacked a sense of humor, but still, she'd been nice. Beppi had courted her for nearly a year. “She bored me, Mama.” What about that pale, pretty art student from somewhere north of Milan, who sat in front of the church and drew pictures of it, which were not especially good, but weren't terrible? Beppi had been so serious about her, he'd looked at property for a house of his own, but the plans had popped like a bubble. “She bored me even worse than the Communist.” And Enzo's cousin Donata, with the Malfada cheese industry behind her, a perfectly suitable girl, if on the plain side? “She's too pious, Mama. She gets along better with cows than with people.” And Mariano Minzoni's niece from Verona, coming often for visits when she couldn't stand Mariano? “Mama, I'd be someone with a death wish if I wanted a Minzoni bride. She'll henpeck me. She'll chase me around the kitchen with a knife.”

Nothing. Why hadn't he given me grandchildren? He was the son of a widow. You'd think with all the women he'd been involved with, there'd have been a
bastardo
or two.

Not even that! Selfish boy! What was he blowing up trucks for? Why did he have to make a squad? Why didn't he stay in the restaurant with Mariano and the cooks, and so what if it was loaded with the enemy? I'd know where he was!

Tackle.
Beppi would have been good at football if he lived in America. That's what the American had said. Why hadn't we moved to New York when Aldo wanted to? There weren't any Nazis in Manhattan.

“Lucia, are you listening to me?”

Annmarie stood close by the bench, but at least she'd had the sense to keep her distance and not sit down.

A tackler. Just like Beppi. They must have recognized each other as kindred spirits when they'd met.

“Lucia, please don't tell me again not to speak to you.”

No apology. No remorse for having acted to me like a thug. I realized that she had stopped calling me Signora Fantini. I didn't correct her for using my first name.

“It's a good thing I didn't throw out this shopping bag,” she said. “I've got the guns in it, wrapped up nicely. Would you happen to have a hairbrush, not that I have a lot that needs brushing?”

I turned around. The American had changed her clothes.

Well, she discarded her upper layers. In the place of the towering nun was a towering woman, short-haired, broad-shouldered, in a tailored, light-gray flannel shirtwaist dress with a round, dark-gray collar.

“You took off your habit!”

“It's here in the bag.”

“And your ring!”

“It's in one of the pockets, with a Luger.”

She looked at me in a new way, with a pained bashfulness, as if saying, apologetically, “This is what I really look like. I won't blame you if you think I looked better as a nun.”

Her hair was the color of wheat grain and did not need brushing. It had been cut almost as short as a man's, but there was enough for curls and waves. In spite of having been flattened by the veil, it was light and springy.

So was my heart, suddenly. “You look nice as a woman,” I said.

“Thanks for saying so. It's kind of you. I planned to make the switch on the train, in case I'd been spotted, but then we received the signal. By the way, if anyone wants to know, I'm a professional translator, employed by the American government. That's my other cover. I happen to be with you because you've decided to put songs in English into your repertoire. I'm helping.”

“Like the surrey song, for example?”

“That's a good point. We've got the words. I hadn't thought of that.”

“Is your name the same?”

“It is.”

“Ahn-ma-ree.”

“I like it better when you say Annamaria.”

The gray dress was not Italian or European, but it was stylish, and even elegant, in its own American way, and fit her perfectly. The hem went exactly to the bottom of her knees. She did not wear stockings. The parts of her legs that were visible were evenly tan.

It did not appear that any part of her body wasn't finely tuned and well aligned. She was an athlete, all right.

“Your son looks like a barrel,” she had said. What was the opposite of a barrel? A rainspout?

“She's a rainspout,” I said to myself.

And a light went on in my mind, and illuminated a scattered mess of different pieces of things, gathering them together into a clear, whole picture.

Beppi. The American.

Maybe this was what highly religious people—and witches, too—meant when they claimed to have been touched, or inspired, by strong, mysterious outside forces, not that I believed in forces. Was I having a vision?

It certainly seemed so, even though it was only of commonplace things: a barrel, a rainspout. A wagon called a surrey, which was not a type of woman.

I imagined Beppi and Annmarie side by side on the seat of a horse-drawn wagon. The countryside I pictured was Italian.

What about the American boyfriend, married to another woman?

“You have a funny look,” said Annmarie cautiously, standing there in all those inches of her new self. “Do you think this dress is awful on me?”

“It's fine. Do you ever wear anything colorful? I only ask because I think you'd look nice in blue.”

Blue was Beppi's favorite, all his life, even when he was a teenager and felt that boys shouldn't think about things like colors. The walls of his bedroom at home were a dark, manly blue, and so were many of his shirts and jerseys. He owned three or four blue sweaters and at least half a dozen blue linen handkerchiefs, and neckties, too; there was some shade of blue in nearly every one of them. He also had a dark-blue jacket for fall afternoons, like this one.

Beppi believed I sang at my best when I wore blue. I wore blue for one composer: Mozart.

I had coded my costumes a long time ago. It was superstitious of me, but I'd held on faithfully to my system, with the feeling that, if something's not broken, don't fix it. Technically, they couldn't be called costumes, those gowns of mine. It wasn't as if I sang on a stage, in an actual theater.